Upcoming and Poll Results

Welcome to 2016. The guys at Candy Jar Books have got some great stuff planned for this year, including six titles from the main range and a bonus novella for those who take advantage of the bundle offers (see below for details).

The series returns in the spring with three new titles; Moon Blink by Sadie Miller (co-star of Big Finish’s Sarah Jane Smith range of audio dramas), The Showstoppers by Jonathan Cooper (author of two Space: 1889 novels) and The Grandfather Infestation by John Peel (author of many Doctor Who novelisations and four original Doctor Who novels). Three further titles will be announced in the summer.

But what of 2015? We ran a end-of-year poll in the last few weeks to see what you, the reader, thought of the 2015 titles. The results can be seen below.

For ‘Favourite Novel’ the battle was fierce, with Beast of Fang Rock and Mutually Assured Domination vying for top position, but things changed in the last few days with The Forgotten Son rising rapidly to second place with 26.92% of the votes, with Mutually Assured Domination close behind at third place with 25.96% of the votes. Making the ‘Favourite Novel 2015’ as voted by the readers, Beast of Fang Rock.

Featured Image -- 517

 

 

The ‘Favourite Short’ poll saw a clear winner, while the interesting stuff was happening lower in the poll. Initially it seemed that The Ambush was likely to grab second spot, but as the days and weeks passed it was rapidly taken over by both The Cult of the Grinning Man and The Fright Before Christmas, both written by newcomer Tom Dexter. Ultimately the former took second place with 19.18% of the votes, followed by the festive story, with 16.7% of the votes. This left The Dogs of War, which saw Lethbridge-Stewart team up with Counter Measures‘ Gilmore, as winner, and the readers’ ‘Favourite Short 2015’.

CJ_DOW_Cover_Small

Order details for this years titles can be found HERE, including bundle offers (worldwide) and a subscription offer for UK residents only.

Author: Andy Frankham-Allen

Stephen King, in the introduction to the 2005 re-issue of ‘Salem’s Lot wrote, ‘Writing controlled fiction is called “plotting”. Buckling your seatbelt and letting the story take over, however… that is called “storytelling”. Storytelling is as natural as breathing; plotting is the literary version of artificial respiration’, and that pretty much sums up Andy’s own brand of writing. His stories have plots, but they are plots that evolve from the characters, plots that develop as the characters do once a key idea is conceived. He has written several novels in the Space: 1889 & Beyond series, and short stories for Big Finish’s official Doctor Who anthologies, as well as many short stories published by Untreed Reads and was editor of Pantechnicon eZine which he co-founded with Trudi Topham in 2007. In 2013 he wrote the ultimate guide to the Companions of Doctor Who for Candy Jar Books, which won rave reviews from Doctor Who Magazine (“Frankham-Allen’s style is engaging and enthusiastic, maintaining a pacey discourse throughout when it would have been easy to just provide a droning list… As the role of the companion continues to grow and develop within Doctor Who, on screen and off, there’s a sense that this is just the beginning of a work that is ripe for updating in a few year’s time. Let’s hope that Andy Frankham-allen is already working on volume two.”) and other science fiction magazines. His magnum opus, The Garden, remains incomplete with only the first of four books released. However, until vampires become in vogue again and a mainstream publisher wishes to pick it up, he feels that Seeker will remain an orphan. His favourite contemporary authors are John Connolly, Karin Slaughter and John Ajvide Lindqvist, and his favourite genre authors are HG Wells, John Wyndham and Stephen King. His favourite television shows are Supernatural and Doctor Who (1963-1989) with various other shows vying for third place, including The 4400, Battlestar Galactica (remake), Dollhouse, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and countless others. His musical tastes vary a lot, and he enjoys everything from metal to classical. He’s a bit of a comic fan, or was when younger, and loves almost every single Marvel film made, and a few DC (but can’t stand the work of Christopher Nolan). But most of all he loves with a passion The Transformers (although he always stresses at this point that he’s referring to the original comics that began in 1984 and not the modern iterations thereof). When asked why he became a writer, he explains, ‘I was always going to become one of three things. Either a singer, a dancer or a writer. I can only sing well when in the shower, or drunk, a serious ankle injury in 1996 put paid to any serious dreams of dancing (although I can still move on a dance floor, don’t you worry), and so I was left with writing.’

One thought on “Upcoming and Poll Results”

Leave a comment